Ever taken your kid in for X-rays? A blood draw? A CT scan? Surgery? Or maybe you’ve had to tell your Type I diabetes kid, “no dessert tonight … or ever.” Or you gluten-intolerant preschooler she’s off the Pop-Tarts. Those are all reasonable things for a person to do, in the name of health maintenance. But getting a child to understand what is happening to them — and why all the changes — isn’t always easy.

Take it from me, you can’t hug away the fear that a heavy iron apron, a dark room and big, big machinery invoke — even if the X-ray really will only take  a second.

But there is a way to make things better — even funny. Continue reading »

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Scientists think they have unlocked the chemical triggers that cause puberty: a reaction in the KISS-1 gene. That awkward period of intense growth and change has long been a mystery. We know what happens, but we don’t know what triggers it to begin.

Now researchers have found a chemical reaction in the brain that they believe starts that period of growth spurts, pimples and mood swings.

This could be great news for parents worried about the increasingly early onset of puberty. Knowing what triggers these changes in the body could be a first step towards finding out why it’s happening earlier. Hopefully, that will lead to finding ways to slow it down again. No one wants to take their 7-year-old bra shopping.

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Pardon the melodrama, but sometimes being a parent makes you cry. And not always the pull-your-hair-out or I’ve-failed-again tears. Happy tears! Some situations stir up happy tears.

The Fall is one time of the year that can trigger these happy tears, especially if you’ve got a 4-, 5- or 6-year-old off to school, real school, for the first time. Though the first day of preschool can also bring on the waterworks,  if you’re like me and emotional during big transitions. Even first time at a new daycare leaves me dabbing away drips of mascara. I know, I’m weak. Continue reading »

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A fascinating study of mothers in rural Bangladesh has found that “clinical depression and anxiety during pregnancy can result in smaller babies who are more likely to die in infancy.”  Researchers suggest that poor maternal mental health, more so than poverty, malnutrition or low socioeconomic status, has an adverse effect on infant mortality rates and the overall health of children.

18% of the women examined were diagnosed with depression and 25% suffered anxiety while pregnant.  Study author Hashima-E- Nasreen notes that a high infant mortality rate as a result of these afflictions is likely to “perpetuate the cycle of mental health problems and underdevelopment” in South Asia.

According to PsychCentral, “one way to reach the internationally-agreed Millennium Development Goal to reduce child mortality in the developing world would be to invest in mental health support services in this area.”  Agreed.  But it doesn’t take a genius to wonder why these women are depressed and anxious in the first place.  According to the United Nations, women in rural Bangladesh “have a nearly 50% lower adult literacy rate than men,” have “extensive work loads with dual responsibility for farm and household production” and their “contribution to agriculture, which is counted as unpaid family labour, is grossly underestimated.”  Sounds pretty depressing to me. 

But what about America?  How many pregnant women in the U.S. suffer from anxiety and depression?  Probably more than you think. Continue reading »

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Some kids will do anything to get out of going to school.  They feign illness and plead disease just so they can stay in bed and out of class.  Most parents are hip to this fake sick routine and in the absence of a fever or other telltale signs of a real illness, will insist they get up and go.

But when your kid complains of something hard to disprove – like a headache – what do you do?  If it happens a lot, you may be tempted to assume it’s just another ploy to get out of going to school.  But according to Dr. Andrew Hershey, professor of pediatrics and neurology and director of the Headache Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, your kid’s headache might be a migraine and going to school may actually be contributing to it. Continue reading »

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The HBO movie Temple Grandin won big at the 62nd Emmy Awards this Sunday, taking home five awards, including best made-for-TV movie. In the film, Claire Danes plays Grandin, the world-renowned animal scientist and perhaps the most well-known and vocal person on the autism spectrum.

What I love about Grandin’s story (she’s a best-selling author and one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2010) is that she’s not successful in spite of her diagnosis of autism, she’s made brilliant contributions as a scientist and advocate precisely because she sees the world in a unique way.

In an interview earlier this year, Grandin had some advice for parents of children on the autism spectrum, as well as some insights about the rising number of autism cases. Continue reading »

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The bad news about BPA just keeps coming.

We know the hormone-disrupting chemical leaches into our food and water through plastics, the linings of food and beverage cans and other household items. Over 90 percent of Canadians have BPA present in their bodies. The specter of BPA exposure is a huge stress for pregnant women.

But does it do any real harm? Industry lobbyists would like us to believe the chemical is safe for humans, but science just keeps turning up more evidence that it’s not.

A new study from Washington State University shows that even extremely small doses of BPA affect the ovaries of female mice. It takes only 12 hours for BPA to disrupt the formation of eggs and alter their ability to pass on genetic information.

That affects not only the lady mouse with the BPA exposure, but her children and grandchildren.

Continue reading »

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